Andrew ou la disgrâce interminable d'un prince
Former Prince Andrew, younger brother of King Charles III, continued his inexorable descent into hell on Thursday by becoming the first member of the royal family in recent history to be arrested - on the very day of his 66th birthday.
Already sidelined from public life, stripped of all his royal titles, and evicted from his luxurious Royal Lodge residence in Windsor, the former Duke of York was arrested and taken into custody on Thursday by British police, suspected of "misconduct in the performance of official duties" related to the Epstein affair.
His ties of friendship with the American pedophile - the two men had known each other since 1999 - have precipitated the downfall of this former war hero in recent years.
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor had no public role since November 2019, after a disastrous BBC interview in which he claimed he had never met Virginia Giuffre, the key witness in the Epstein case who accused him of multiple sexual assaults.
But it took further revelations in October 2025 for the monarch to strip him of all his royal titles, and February for him to leave Royal Lodge, his Windsor residence - which was raided this Thursday by the police, according to British media.
At the request of Charles III, he had then had to move into a private royal residence in Sandringham, in the east of England.
In a rare statement signed with his name, the king appeared to endorse, after the announcement of the arrest, the break with his brother, stressing that justice must now "take its course".
Because the removal of the title of prince and the exile to Sandringham have not slowed the flow of embarrassing information about Andrew.
Revelations almost daily
The release in late January of a new batch of documents from the Epstein files by the US Department of Justice triggered almost daily revelations in the press about the former Duke of York.
Among them are photos showing him kneeling over a young woman with her face hidden, emails inviting Epstein to Buckingham to speak "privately", and others in which he appears to be passing on confidential economic information to the financier.
At least eight different regional police forces are now investigating these revelations. And calls for Andrew to testify in court, particularly in the United States, have multiplied, reaching as far as Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
The former prince, who has always denied the accusations against him, never responded to these calls.
However, fate has not always been bleak for the man who was for a long time second in line to the throne - still eighth today, even though MPs are calling for the slow process to begin that would remove this distinction from him.
Born on February 19, 1960 at Buckingham Palace, Andrew is the third child of Elizabeth II - her favorite, according to royal commentators - and her husband Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.
For a long time, his 22 years spent in the Royal Navy and his role during the Falklands War (1982) made him a popular hero, smiling readily, more at ease in public than his brother Charles.
Playboy
A flamboyant playboy figure, nicknamed "Andy the Hot Rabbit" in his youth at a time when #MeToo did not exist, he travelled the world at great expense for his role as the UK's Special Envoy for International Trade (2001-2011), which has now landed him in police custody.
He then created a philanthropic network to connect small entrepreneurs and investors, whose success was completely overshadowed by the Epstein affair.
The former prince has also been frequently criticized for his errors of judgment and questionable business contacts abroad, as evidenced by a controversy in 2025 over his ties to a Chinese man suspected of espionage.
However, it was the sexual assault allegations made by Virginia Giuffre that actually led to her downfall.
This Epstein victim, who committed suicide in April 2025, accused Andrew of sexually exploiting her on three occasions, including two times when she was a minor.
In early February, a second victim of the pedophile also claimed, through her lawyer, that the financier had sent her to England in 2010 to have sexual relations with Andrew at Royal Lodge.
His ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, from whom Andrew divorced in 1996 but remained very close, was also caught up in the scandal after the publication of compromising emails exchanged with Epstein.
Their daughters, Beatrice (born in 1988) and Eugenie (born in 1990), have retained their title of princesses.
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